


you’d be here by now

by angelica_barnes



Series: Without You [2]
Category: One Direction (Band), Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: Angst, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 00:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15352488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelica_barnes/pseuds/angelica_barnes
Summary: harry dies.taylor doesn't deal.(neither do the boys.they're losing her too.)





	you’d be here by now

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "If This Was A Movie" by Taylor Swift

Front cover of the PEOPLE magazine, June 25, 2017 :

 

**HARRY STYLES KILLED IN CAR CRASH !  INSIDE : HIS STORY, HIS WORDS, AND HEARTFELT MESSAGES FROM MOURNING FANS**

 

 

Taylor never liked tea. Harry did.

She holds a steaming cup of it in her hands though, staring blankly out the large window that takes up most of the wall directly in front of the staircase. She doesn’t know why she came to their old Vermont hangout, where the boys would come with Ed and all their families, and Niall would play guitar and Harry would hold her in his arms and anyone who didn’t know any better would think they were a couple, and her voice wasn’t thick with tears.

She’s only wearing a white shirt that’s oversized, and a pair of underwear, with no bra, and maybe she shouldn’t be staring out at the street where just anyone could stare back, and her hair has been uncombed for days.

People who know about her loss would ask her why she’s not wearing black, but she is, in a way.

The too-big shirt is Harry’s, the tea is his favorite kind in his favorite cup, and her hair is from nights of restless, close to no, sleep.

She brings the brim of the cup to her lips and takes a sip; she wrinkles her nose and squeezes her eyes shut in distaste; it tastes like tears.

 

 

**Top headline on the New York Times, July 6, 2017 :**

 

**THE TRAGIC DEATH OF HARRY STYLES : THE LOSS THAT HAS MILLIONS IN TEARS**

 

 

Taylor gave up reading the newspaper on June 26. This year. It makes everything seem too real, too soon, and for once, she tries to live without knowing what’s going on outside her window.

The tour was cancelled, but she has plenty of songs for a sixth album, and she records them in their personal studio, but they reach no one’s ears but hers. She plays the makeshift CD’s they made of original songs and terrible singing skills, and it’s repeat, repeat, his voice the swirl in whip cream and the sweet in honey, and she doesn’t cry.

Her phone is dead, and she doesn’t care. There’s a charger plugged in on the kitchen table, a sliver away from her only way to contact the outside world, and she hasn’t touched either in days. But she sits at the kitchen table, staring at them for hours on end, and finally she gives it the time to reach 10%. Then she picks it up and holds it to her ear, and a frantic Liam Payne answers.

He asks her where she is, and if she’s coming home, and she shakes her head to both before saying “No,” and “Maybe.” The other boys have crowded around the phone, she can tell, and they all sound exhausted and like they aren’t coping at all, and she doesn’t blame them because she isn’t either.

She’s about to ask how they’ve been when Liam asks if she’s okay, and it takes two seconds for her to feel the tears in her eyes and her finger press the end button.

“No,” she whispers to the empty air, burying her face in her hands and tangling her fingers in her hair, “no, I’m not okay.”

She pretends she is, but she really isn’t.

 

 

**An article posted to The Guardian website, December 23, 2017 :**

 

**LOUIS TOMLINSON’S BIRTHDAY TOMORROW : CELEBRATION OR STAYING IN? IS THE REALITY OF HARRY STYLES’ DEATH FINALLY HITTING HIM?**

 

 

Taylor has never believed in ghosts, never. Even in her childhood, when Harry would crawl into her bed and ask her who the lady in the kitchen was, her answer was, “Mom.” Always, always “Mom.”

She’s not so sure that’s what she wants to believe anymore. Her faith lies elsewhere.

She calls Louis and wishes him a happy birthday, but he only bursts into tears and blubbers something about not caring, about how Harry isn’t there and so nothing matters, and Taylor sighs, trying not to cry herself.

“Sometimes,” Louis takes a deep, shuddering breath, “sometimes, I imagine he’s still here. And the boys join in. We pretend that he’s around and I’ll put my arm around nothing and Niall will ask a question to empty air and Zayn kisses the smoke he exhales and Liam is lecturing Harry’s pillows, because we just need to pretend he’s…”

Louis trails off, and Taylor is silent for a moment before finishing for him, “Not gone. I know.”

Louis starts sobbing all over again, and Taylor tells him she loves him and the others and they all show up at her house and for the first time since It happened, she opens the door for someone.

They pile up on her couch and cuddle with each other and her, and soon they’re all drunk off their asses and hiccuping and crying and she can’t forget, she _still_ remembers, and she’s so sick of it all.

They are too, she knows it, and Liam stays sober and drives the other three home after placing a kiss to her forehead and telling her to get some rest, and she tries.

But she only ends up in the living room, crouching with her knees pulled to her chest and tear-stained cheeks, watching the moonlight reflect off empty beer bottles, and she allows herself to cry.

“I miss you,” she sobs. “I miss you so much it hurts.”

And she rocks herself back and forth, imagining Harry’s arms holding her tight, and she replays her conversation with Louis in her head over and over again because, “Me too.”

 

 

**A quote from a snippet found in the Events Of 2017 in the TIME magazine, January 1, 2018 :**

 

**“We have a choice : to live or to exist.”**

**\- Harry Styles, RIP**

 

 

Taylor wakes up hungover, because she’s been drinking and crying and sleeping on repeat ever since Louis’ birthday, and the phone is dead again. She presses her fingers to her temple and rubs it, wincing at the monster of a headache she has, once again, and makes her way to the bathroom to grab some pills.

She swallows both of them at once, gurgling some water and throwing her head back, and she chokes. She grasps at her throat until she spits the saliva-infested water with dusty bits of pill exterior onto the floor, and she wipes her mouth on her non-existent sleeve.

Taylor wanders the house, leaving the lights off, and she trips on both sets of stairs and spends ten minutes in the uncleaned attic sneezing and then she lays starfished on her bed and watches the ceiling fan go round and round in never ending circles.

It’s a boring day where she does nothing, but she doesn’t cry, not a tear, and she drops into bed with her bones feeling like lead because she’s exhausted. Mentally, as much as physically, and she’s out of shape.

Something pokes her in the back, and she grunts and rolls over, but it doesn’t help. So she props herself up on her elbow and pats her hand around in the dark, all while watching the pitch black, and then her fingers land on something, and it’s a hairbrush.

She turns on the lamp and studies the object, first wondering why it’s in her (well, it used to be theirs) bed, and then if she can use it as an excuse as to why she looks a mess, but that train of thought stops abruptly as soon as she takes a closer look.

She reaches out two thin fingers and plucks an individual hair that’d been wound around one of the brush’s picks, and she covers her mouth to stifle a sob, tears welling up in her eyes as she scrambles for the phone on her nightstand that _thank god_ is charged to fifteen measly percent even though she never plugged it in, and Liam picks up immediately even though it’s one AM.

“What’s wrong?” He whispers frantically, and she can hear shuffling in the background, because the boys are probably all piled together, sleeping, and she stares at the dark brown curl hanging from her fingertips.

“It’s his, Liam,” she says brokenly, and he has no idea what she’s talking about of course but he just listens; “Liam, it’s his.”

He stays on the line with her until she falls asleep, muttering her brother’s name again and again and again before sleep comes and takes her.

“I miss him too,” Liam murmurs to nobody, once she’s asleep, “we miss him all the time.”

 

 

**Tweet sent out by anonymous fan, February 1, 2018 :**

 

**WE MISS YOU @Harry_Styles ❤❤❤**

 

 

 

 

**Instagram post by @taylorswift, June 25, 2018 :**

**Miss you baby bro @harrystyles.xx I love you tons, my Hazza**

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> all articles/headlines/tweets/posts were made up by me. none are real


End file.
